I suspect that the EU official in question relied on the warm fuzzy principle, whereby he wasn't getting warm fuzzies about Europe's bandwidth capacity. That data point alone was worth requesting they lower their bit rate.

I'll bet the ISP's will be using this, after the dust has settled, as 'official' evidence of the unjust burden placed upon their valuable resources by streaming services, justifying them in charging twice (i.e. sender as well as recipient) for the privilege of higher definition streaming services.

I suspect that the EU official in question relied on the warm fuzzy principle, whereby he wasn't getting warm fuzzies about Europe's bandwidth capacity. That data point alone was worth requesting they lower their bit rate.

"I'm in charge people are looking at me for answers let's do something anything to make it look like I'm on top of the situation."

Interesting idea -- but IMO the problem seems like it's more likely to be companies that have insufficient bandwidth to cope with all their LAN devices suddenly being on the VPN at once.

I don't see work from home being anywhere near what a normal night/weekend of streaming movies is at that end of the pipe.

Now what I could see this helping is overwhelmed peering links...there are times I see traffic between 2 known points going slower than expected for no apparent reason. If that's an issue, I could see reducing quality of video being a substantial help. I don't know that "we" normal people have an easy way to evaluate how close to a problem we are though.

I found it interesting that when I upgraded to Netflix 4k, it took effect immediately. This morning I downgraded my Netflix service (US) to full HD, from 4k. That change doesn't take effect until my next billing period, so they can keep charging me more until then. Greedy much Netflix?

I found it interesting that when I upgraded to Netflix 4k, it took effect immediately. This morning I downgraded my Netflix service (US) to full HD, from 4k. That change doesn't take effect until my next billing period, so they can keep charging me more until then. Greedy much Netflix?

I think not exactly; They already billed you for this month and they don't want to issue a partial refund/credit.

It doesn't sit well at all that the EU is making these requests (will they become demands?) without providing any evidence that congestion is a problem now or will be a problem in the future. Lowering the bitrate over concerns of the *peak* usage also does nothing to address why I can't stream in 4K at 2 AM.

YouTube seems to be taking a slightly different approach. "We are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default"

Argh! I thought I was going mad seeing all those videos playing at 480p by default and having to manually force the highest resolution. Would be nice if they actually announced the change on the website instead of doing it silently.

I work in video streaming (no, not in that industry). We can't add capacity fast enough. We're planning for at least 10x bandwidth increases over the next couple weeks for our product, and might have to go significantly higher than that.

It doesn't sit well at all that the EU is making these requests (will they become demands?) without providing any evidence that congestion is a problem now or will be a problem in the future. Lowering the bitrate over concerns of the *peak* usage also does nothing to address why I can't stream in 4K at 2 AM.

I know! I know! It's a Google-Netflix liberal hoax. We all know that there's absolutely no evidence that there's Internet congestion happening right now. And I just read an article by Alex Jones that the time zones are fake: if it's 2:00 a.m. where you are, it's 2:00 a.m. everywhere.